Reclamation
by akg.writes
Summary: I take you back to a time long ago, a time long before The Angry Homesteading Warrior Makes a Bathtub and B'Elanna and the Caves of Lust. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... the first evening in the Delta Quadrant.


He had been avoiding her quarters. 

At first, he simply told himself that one did not visit the Captain's personal domain. It just wasn't done. He understood well enough the struggle Starfleet captains had with separating the officer from the person. To drag her from the warmth of closeted womanhood to the loneliness of command by encroaching on her private time was at best merely frowned upon by Starfleet... and at worst, simply cruel.

Of course, he'd never demonstrated a particular propensity for upholding Starfleet protocols and it had been a long time since anyone had accused him of morality.

He then told himself that with an impressionable young ensign as a shadow - an ensign just fresh enough to be awed by his experience rather than wary of his cynicism - he couldn't possibly visit the Captain in her quarters. The kid wouldn't yet have been made aware of the dual nature of command, but he sure as hell would protest anyone upsetting his Captain.

But he remembered then that he wasn't a nice guy and that the kid's feelings shouldn't really be top priority to someone like him.

So then he told himself that she was his father's protege. Visiting her would be tantamount to visiting his father and even a lifetime away from the Alpha Quadrant, he was loathe to do the latter.

But then he remembered her posturing on the bridge as she stood up to a wanted terrorist twice her size to protect him... and the warm twinkle in her eyes as she gave him a field commission. The comparison fell through.

He then told himself that he wasn't about to waste the second chance she'd given him, to just throw away the opportunity to make something of himself.

But then, it wouldn't be the first time he'd done that.

So then he told himself that he didn't even want to see her, let alone need to.

Strange, but that one didn't last longer than a single, self-deluded moment.

It was not until after she had issued the fateful command that marked her as both savior and betrayer, after he had had time enough to recognize the impact such a decision would have on her, that he realized he could no longer afford to make excuses. She was going to need him.

When she bade him enter, her voice was cool, steely, exactly what he would expect from his father's prized protege. But as soon as he saw her eyes, saw the last few persevering flickers of a dying hope in the subdued blue-gray, he realized that he had made a grave error: It wasn't that she was going to need him. She already did.

"Lieutenant," she greeted him, her voice completely, perfectly even, as she stood up from her perch on the couch to cross the darkened room.

He had not considered that she might have company... or if it had been one of his original concerns, it had been discarded as soon as he had recognized the dull pain in her eyes. No one could be with her and not go out of his way to alleviate that kind of weary misery. She was his father's greatest success where he was his most dismal failure... and yet... even then... he knew he would go to any length to keep that look of hopelessness from returning to her face.

So when the Maquis Chakotay appeared behind her, Paris had an irrational urge to slam him up against her door for letting such despondency settle over her features. He swallowed the urge with some difficulty - and hoped that Chakotay would do the same with the similar urge painted across his face - before the Captain had two of her new senior staff brawling like Nausicaans in her doorway.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know you were busy," Paris said, forcing as polite a tone as possible. It probably came out as more of a smirk if the look on Chakotay's face was any indication, but the Captain seemed to recognize and appreciate his attempt at civility.

"Commander Chakotay and I have a lot to discuss," was all she said.

"Bet Tuvok wouldn't like you alone with the good commander," Paris said sardonically before he could think better of it, his eyes on the burly Maquis behind her.

The Captain took a deliberate step forward and his attention was immediately drawn back to her. Whether she was putting herself directly between two obviously antagonistic men or invading his personal space to make up for her small stature, he could not say. All he knew was that her voice was firm and her eyes brooked no argument.

"As chief CONN officer aboard this vessel, Mr. Paris," she said evenly, "you will not speak of your commanding officer with such disrespect. Is that understood?"

"Perfectly." Paris made an almost excruciating attempt to keep the smirk out of his voice this time. He only partly succeeded, but again, the Captain appeared satisfied by the effort.

"Good," she said with a brisk nod. She then turned to Chakotay, dismissing him with a quiet, "I'll see you tomorrow on the bridge."

Chakotay gazed at her for what seemed like a long time. Paris wondered if he looked at her the same way.

She misinterpreted the motives behind the stare. It may have been on purpose; Paris couldn't tell. "We'll make this work, Chakotay," she assured him quietly.

"I hope so, Captain," he responded in the same tone. He looked away then. "Good night."

The Captain watched him leave, an inscrutable look on her face. Tom watched her.

"He's a good man," she said finally, still looking thoughtfully at the door.

"You don't sound surprised," Paris noted.

"I'm not." She nodded absently. "Pleased, yes. A lesser man might have doomed this trial before it could begin." She shook herself then, gesturing for him to take a seat.. "I expected you here earlier."

That surprised him. Seeing as how she had done nothing but surprise him since their first meeting, he should have expected it.

He perched on the edge of her couch, for some reason unable to duplicate the easy informality of their previous encounters. He noticed her notice it, saw the shadow fall over her already pained face, and made an almost painfully obvious attempt to modify his position.

"It's all right," she said. She sat down next to him at the perfect, respectable distance.

They sat in silence for a long time before Paris leaned forward and dropped two small objects onto her table with a light clatter. He sat back.

She did not need to glance at his naked collar to verify what they were. "I see," she said. She did not pick them up, merely stared at them.

"Do you?"

Her head snapped up at him. "Watch your tone, Mr. Paris," she said with surprising mildness. "I'm still the Captain."

He nodded slowly. "You'll always be the Captain. But those..." He stopped, then tried again. "You have plenty of officers, Captain."

She picked up one of the pips and fingered it thoughtfully. "Your point, Mr. Paris?"

"I take those pips, Captain, and I have to play by your rules."

"I'm the Captain, Mr. Paris. On my ship you will always play by my rules."

"I'm not talking about those rules and I think you know it."

He expected her to latch on to his boldness, remonstrate him for it, and then take control of the situation and manipulate it to her advantage as Starfleet had no doubt taught her to do. She surprised him again by remaining silent. Knowing that silence was all a captain and woman in her position could give, he took it as tacit permission to continue.

He reached towards her, his fingers brushing lightly over hers as he took the pip from her hand. He held the small circle up so that it glittered in even the dim, shimmering light of the starfield and said, "Look at this. What do you see?"

"I see your past, Mr. Paris," she answered quietly. "And I see your future."

He smiled slightly at that. "It's shinier than I thought it would be," he commented.

"But not shinier than you once hoped, I would imagine."

She was still looking at the pip, a tiny, glittering piece of metal between his fingers. He wondered if she was trying not to look directly at him. But the aloof tilt to her head, the set of her shoulders, even the perfectly proper placement of her hands in her lap reminded him of why he had come, what he had not been able to talk himself out of doing.

"Do you know what I see?" he asked. She didn't respond - he hadn't really expected her to and suspected she knew as much - and he stared at the tiny disk for a moment before continuing. "I see your future, Captain."

He could tell by the sudden tension in her shoulders that she had not anticipated that, could see from the slight narrowing of her eyes that she was about to contest his statement. "Or rather the future you're trying to throw away."

"Mr. Paris," she began, her voice tight, "I imagine you are here for something far more important than divining my future from a piece of metal."

He looked down at the pip still in his fingers and with an honesty of which he had forgotten he was capable said, "There is nothing more important than that."

He was grateful for the long moment of silence that followed his words. It had been so long since he had allowed himself a moment of honesty that he had forgotten the uncertainty, the vulnerability, implicit in the baring of one's genuine self to another. He needed the minute to prepare himself for her response.

But when she finally spoke again, her voice betrayed nothing and he was grateful for that too. "If you are here to resign your commission, Mr. Paris, please do so with the knowledge that I will not offer it again. If that is not your purpose here, I invite you to define the true objective."

He leaned back against the cushions of her couch then. "Did my dad ever tell you about a man named Bull?" He didn't wait for her to answer. "You would have known him as Eric D'Angelo. Captain Eric D'Angelo. Big guy. Hence the name." He smiled faintly. "My sisters and I called him Uncle Bull. Hell, even my mom called him Bull. Man was my hero... captain of the Winston Churchill, a great pilot willing to take me up on whatever shuttle was lying around when my dad wasn't looking, and the only guy I remember who, after the Cardassians, could make my dad smile." He felt the smile that had so easily crept upon him with mention of Bull slowly fade away, a tighter, more forced twist of his lips in its place. "My dad caught a ride to some kind of conference on the Churchill... took me with him. Not once in the thirty-four days we were on that ship did Uncle Bull visit us for longer than to make transport arrangements with my dad. I'll never forget what my dad said when I asked him why Uncle Bull wasn't spending time with us: 'Captain D'Angelo is a busy man, Tom.'" He idly twirled the pip between his thumb and forefinger, much the same way he remembered fiddling with an isolinear chip more than ten years earlier as he awaited an explanation from his father that had never come. "I'd never heard my dad call Uncle Bull that before. I didn't even know a 'Captain D'Angelo'. And you know what, Captain? Neither did my father."

He turned partially to gauge her reaction. She was staring at the hands folded in perfect dignity in her lap.

"It took me a long time to get it," he continued quietly, watching as she blinked slowly once... twice before focusing back on the pip. "That Captain D'Angelo and Uncle Bull weren't the same person, that they each had their own spheres, their own territories. After that conference, I never saw Captain D'Angelo again. Two months later, though, Uncle Bull came to our house again... took me up in a shuttle again... beat my dad so bad at poker that he had to smile. Nice guy. I'll miss him a lot."

There was again a moment of silence, but this time he found himself wishing that she would say something, anything, just so that he could know what she thought of his words. He wasn't sure if he should be worried or not at how easily he had fallen, vulnerable, into that trap of opinion, expectation.

He need not have worried. "And the moral of the story, Mr. Paris?" she asked him softly, gently.

She was going to make him say it. He was going to make sure she heard it. "You're going to be spending the next seventy years as 'Captain D'Angelo'. Are you ready to give up so easily on Uncle Bull?"

He watched her as she processed that, saw only the merest flicker of something pass underneath her lashes before she blinked quickly to remove it.

"Before I take these pips, Captain," he said quietly, simply, "I need to know that you understand what it means."

"I know exactly what it means, Mr. Paris," she said. "It means getting Voyager a pilot who can keep her in one piece. It means giving you my protection on a ship filled with people who wouldn't mind seeing you dead. It means giving you another chance."

He picked up the other pip, held the two side-by-side in his hand before nodding slowly. "It means all that too," he said. "But I'm the only person on this ship who can be your friend first. I'm the only person on board in any position to appreciate Uncle Bull. If I take these pips, all that changes... you become the same Captain D'Angelo to me as you already are to everyone else on this ship. I need to know that you've taken that into consideration. Because if you haven't..." He carefully pried her hands apart and dropped the two pips into one of her palms. "... I want you to look at those and tell me what you see."

He saw her swallow once, convulsively, saw her tense her muscles to prevent him from seeing the tremor that ran the length of her slender frame. "I see..." She reached up to him then, and with hands of surprising steadiness, gently nudged his chin to one side with the barest flutter of a fingertip, and put the pips in their rightful place. "I see the future of a man who just proved to me how much he deserves these."

He made a move to catch her hand before she drew away, but stopped himself before he touched her, already feeling the weight of the pips on his collar. "You're sure?"

She smiled faintly. "I'm the Captain. I'm always sure." She stood and he followed suit. "Besides... I imagine it takes a bit more than two little scraps of metal to keep Tom Paris in line."

"In that case, Captain..." He smiled down at her, unable to resist. "Ever play pool?"

She raised a disgruntled eyebrow, but an unmistakable flicker of amusement crossed her face. "Good night, Mr. Paris."

"It's a good game, Captain. I can teach you everything you need to know."

"Good night, Mr. Paris." He recognized a very definite sparkle in her eyes just as the doors closed in his face.

He tried to tell himself that the light little sparkle meant nothing to him, that being the one to put it in her eyes did not fill him with a sense of contented accomplishment.

Strange, but that one didn't last longer than a single, self-deluded moment.


End file.
